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Vol. 4, No. 1: Politics (1998)

  //  spring 1998

Spring 1998 brings our first Politics special issue, featuring: Tony Horowitz on “Black Confederates.” Confronting the new Republican South. South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary. The 25-year paradox of Jim Hunt and Jesse Helms in North Carolina. Following the money in Alabama. Tracking the high cost of gubernatorial campaigns over the previous twenty years. The challenge of translating southern womanhood into elected office. Reflections on redistricting. The SCLC’s Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 in photos. Presidential campaign songs of 1844. And a reflection on the Store Lunch.

Table of Contents
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Front Porch: Spring 1998

by Harry L. Watson
For many of us, the process of self-government has become so dispiriting that politics itself has become a term of reproach, and aspirants to public office outdo one another in denunciations of the government they wish to join. William Faulkner prefaced Requiem for a Nun with an evocative story about the origins of civic justice »
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The Black and the Gray: An Interview with Tony Horwitz

by Tony Horwitz
Proponents of black Confederates can claim p.c. motives—recognizing the wartime South’s diversity—while advancing what, for many, is an un-p.c. message: namely, that if blacks supported the Cause, it couldn’t have been so bad. Southern Cultures: So, how did you get interested in this business of black Confederates? Tony Horwitz: I kept hearing about them wherever »
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Introduction: The Culture of Southern Politics

by Ferrel Guillory
“But, whoever suggests that the political southernization of America has come to pass must also reckon with what has come to pass in southern politics.” The elections of 1992, 1994, and 1996 have given commentators plenty of evidence to assert that American politics has been thoroughly “southernized.” President Clinton is from Arkansas, Vice President Gore »
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Whither Southern Republicans?

by Whit Ayres
“If truth be known, many southern Republicans are pinching themselves as the 1998 election approaches, amazed at and wondering about the extent of their success.” If the truth be known, many southern Republicans are pinching themselves as the 1998 election approaches, amazed at and wondering about the extent of their success. Consider recent Republican accomplishments »
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“The Dread Handwriting Is on the Wall”: Confronting the New Republican South

by Mac McCorkle
“Caution in predicting the southern political weather might seem to be in order.” The young W. J. Cash penned these words after Herbert Hoover’s conquest of North Carolina, as well as three other southern states, in his 1928 presidential victory over New York’s Democratic Governor Al Smith. Cash was not the only observer foreseeing a »
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Between a Rock and a Hard Place: South Carolina’s Republican Presidential Primary

by Cole Blease Graham Jr.
“They were Republicans under the skin, but they could not join a party indentified with the destruction of the South.” The “rock” in this case is the Granite State of New Hampshire; the “hard place” is the South, where Republican candidates for any office have had a hard row to hoe over the last century. »
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A Political Paradox: North Carolina’s Twenty-Five Years Under Jim Hunt and Jesse Helms

by Ferrel Guillory
“How is it that a state with a reputation for moderation, even progressivism, elects Jesse Helms?” January 11, 1997, was a frigid Saturday with the sort of clinging cold that stings the ears and numbs the toes. Still, about five thousand citizens of North Carolina gathered outdoors on the wide lawn in front of Broughton »
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Follow the Money

by Natalie Davis
“Alabama politics is not about Democrats and Republicans; it’s about plaintiff lawyers and big business.” The image of Alabama and its politics—from dogs and hoses in Birmingham, to George Wallace standing in the doorway of the university in Tuscaloosa, to a Gadsden judge who insists on hanging the Ten Commandments in his courtroom—is negative, primitive, and redneck. But »
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High Costs of Winning—And Losing

by Thad Beyle
“The shift from party-centered campaigns to candidate-centered campaigns has contributed to the escalation of the costs of running for elective office in the United States.” The shift from party-centered campaigns to candidate-centered campaigns has contributed to the escalation of the costs of running for elective office in the United States. In the modern era, heavy »
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Can the Flower of Southern Womanhood Bloom in the Garden of Southern Politics?

by Sue Tolleson-Rinehart
“Southern women still achieve firsts that have long been secured by women in other regions.” Ah, the flower of southern womanhood: gracious, lovely, and charming. Many features of southern culture have changed greatly over time. In one way, though, the South retains its distinctiveness: it remains the region of the country least hospitable to the »
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Reflections on Redistricting

by Dan Blue
“The first thing we’ve got to do is use political campaigns again as the way to establish dialogue and a way to paint a view or a vision of where we ought to be.” Political campaigns happen to be the ideal place to talk about what your vision for a place ought to be. If, »
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Mule Train: A Thirty-Year Perspective on the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Poor People’s Campaign of 1968

by Roland L. Freeman
“Reminiscences and a gallery of photos documenting an unfinished journey that began thirty years ago.” On 16 September 1997, civil rights activist Bertha Luster called me from Marks, Mississippi. I had first met Ms. Luster and her six children in 1968 on the Mule Train, part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s (SCLC) Poor People’s »
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Reading, Writing, and Race: The Desegregation of the Charlotte Schools by Davison M. Douglas (Review)

by Robert A. Pratt
University of North Carolina Press, 1995 Over the past twenty years, numerous scholars have examined in considerable detail the desegregation experiences of urban school systems throughout the United States. Understandably, the Supreme Court’s 1971 decision to allow busing as a desegregation tool has been the focal point of many of these studies. When the success »
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Tales of the South by William Gilmore Simms, edited by Mary Ann Wimsatt (Review)

by Johanna Nicol Shields
University of South Carolina Press, 1996 This new collection of a dozen tales by the Old South’s most famous writer, South Carolina’s William Gilmore Simms, seeks to broaden Simm’s modern audience by making available a selection of his short fiction in an attractive format. Editor Mary Ann Wimsatt has provided a useful chronology of Simms’s »
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A New Life: Stories and Photographs from the Suburban South edited by Alex Harris, afterword by Allan Gurganus (Review)

by Alex Albright
W.W. Norton & Co., 1997 This elegant and lavish anthology, published by Double Take magazine in cooperation with Norton, boasts eleven suburb photographic portfolios intermixed with fine stories by several of the South’s best writers. It also features Allan Gurganus’s deft afterword, “Toward a Creation Myth of Suburbia.” What it lacks, however, prevents it from being the »
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“He Put His Thumb Up to His Nose, And Twirl’d His Fingers at His Foes”: Presidential Campaign Songs in 1844

by Gavin James Campbell
“Local party organizers were undoubtedly embarassed when the pole fractured and had to be sent to the local blacksmith’s shop for swift repairs.” On 17 August 1844, a Tennessee schoolteacher named Jason Niles joined a large crowd of spectators to watch the raising of a “Clay pole” celebrating the Whig party’s presidential ticket of Henry »
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Store Lunch

by Jerry Leath Mills
“Throughout the rural South, men with regular business in the country — hunters, fishermen, farmers, surveyors, and traveling agents of various trades — traditionally enjoy a repast known as the Store Lunch.” Throughout the rural South, men with regular business in the country—hunters, fishermen, farmers, surveyors, and traveling agents of various trades—traditionally enjoy a repast »
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